Upgrading Your Personal Edit Studio

After over six months of juggling several different corporate editing projects, I've finally found some down time.  The pressure that my editing suite was under became apparent when the delays on existing edits started but the projects didn't stop coming in.  What's a guy to do? Space, organization, and flexibility are key to keeping the ball rolling - time for upgrades!

The bones of my existing PC are great.  Two large 23 inch monitors, a powerful video card, and a diverse range of custom editing tools through Pinnacle, Photoshop, and Premiere provide a sturdy backbone.  It seems there's never enough space for video though.  My solution to this was a USB hub and new hard drives to divide various elements.

This is how my edit suite stacks up after upgrades:

My main drive is now treated just like a home page - main operating functions, final edits awaiting delivery, main software, and several personal details.  My secondary drive is now a personal extension - iTunes library, financial backups, and lots of free space for games, personal edit space, photos, etc.  In addition to this: 

• One hard drive for personal video editing - general archiving.
• One hard drive purely for Flip video storage and backup / homevideo.
• Two hard drives strictly for corporate edits, backup, and archiving.

This provides me with 6 different drives, roughly 5TB of current working space, and a very structured layout of how the drives are used and organized.  The biggest difference here is that I won't have to stretch projects across different drives anymore (with the exception of key backups) and this makes the raw elements easier to catalogue and store.   Not to mention, it's also easier to have more projects on the go and as things progress, dedicate large projects to their own drives.

My focus has always been on the creative end of editing.  What I mean by this is that I'm not always swayed by the most expensive technical tool, but instead by how I can achieve a certain look or effect. My edit studio is far from the most expensive, but it is versatile and modern enough to tackle most of what I want and need to be able to do at this point.

My current setup has probably been about a $3000-$4000 investment over the last three years, and that seems minor when considering the amount of projects, both personal and corporate, that I've completed in that time.  It's kind of amazing how accessible the technology has become actually. 

Next on my list - software.

Creative Clutter

I imagine that a lot of people don't see the benefit in keeping so many random collections in view.  However, so much of what I fill my space with isn't merely stuff, most of it has a story behind why it's even there.

Take my bulletin board for instance.  It may be full, but it also holds random knick-knacks from traveling, postcards from friends, creative tags from a couple of t-shirts, posters, ads, and other little pieces that I thought were cool to look at.  It's become an inspiration board mixing the things I like with the things I've done.  My strategy for making my spaces my own has always been about a lot of visual and graphic emphasis - not shying away from color, contrasting patterns, or mixed textures.

I've always been inspired by pop art and rock culture to the extent that a few photographs just never seemed like enough to tell the full story.  I love that I've surrounded myself with pieces of my past, collections that borrow on the mainstream, samples that emphasize a do-it-yourself type attitude, and gifts that friends probably forgot they gave me.  I've essentially found a style that makes me feel creative and connected to a lot of different sources.

I'd like to think that someone could walk in to my place and by exploring get to know a lot about me - more than what just a family photo might say (although that's in there too). 

Keeping in mind that these photos are all close-ups and that my space is actually a big open loft, the film editor in me has kept things structured and laid out in a way that feels deliberate.  The goal has never been to have a mess of stuff, but instead to create a look that's just busy enough to challenge the way people see or respond to it. 

I guess in a lot of ways I've never wanted to be too easy to sum up.

Flip Cam Test - Jaguar XJ8 Winter Drive

An experiment, a Flip camera demo, a glamour shot of my Jaguar - this edit is all of those things.  I'm starting to feel energized about the idea of producing a more ambitious, stylized, narrative short film.  Meaning that a years worth of work could easily go into a single project and allow me to draw on the variety of creative and technical experiences that I've had in just the last several years.

What I did here with this winter drive test was actually play with the way I could mount my Flip Ultra HD to various points on my car. This included the dash, along the edge of my wheel well, and to the front of the grill.

I decided to cut together a short edit from this footage just because I was impressed with how well some of it turned out.  I see a lot of potential in mixing both the lightweight and maneuverable benefits of my Flip cam with the more cinematic and rich footage of my HDR-FX1 in an upcoming future project.  

For now, I find it encouraging just to see what I can do using my own resources.  Tests like these are really just ways to find inspiration and push myself to tackle even more ambitious and creative shooting techniques that just weren't possible for the low budget indie filmmaker 5 years ago.  I love the idea of merging a professional look with the spirit of an amateur shoot.